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On Stuttering

Two Authors: same struggle In the short stories, “On Stuttering,” by Edward Hoagland, and “Me Talk Pretty,” by David Sedaris, the authors discuss how they dealt with their speech impediments. They wrote about the way they handled their difficulties with speech, the different strategies they used, and how their limitations affected how they felt about themselves. Although the two author’s handicaps were not identical, they both used similar approaches to overcome them. After 60 years of stuttering, Hoagland reminisces about his struggles and triumphs to overcome his stuttering. While attending school, he learned that, “Life can become a matter of measuring the importance of anything you have to say.” He felt that it was better to say nothing or chuckle at everyone else’s conversation instead of subjecting them to watching him struggle to expel his opinion. He learns at a young age to be a good listener, but found it hard not to say anything when he knew more about the subject or if he disagreed with the speaker. Over time he realized that self-confidence could reduce his stuttering. If he became angered, sexually aroused or received affection his stuttering was almost diminished. As he developed relationships and trust, he could talk without difficulty. There was even a girl that he developed a relationship with that ceased his stuttering. However, as the relationship started to fail, he again started to stutter. He compares it to a sort of football game he is playing in his head, with the tacklers living there too. If he pauses to figure out how to describe something, this will

give them time to pull him down. Hoagland still refused to let his stuttering control his life. He is able to get in to the Army by telling them that he only stuttered because he was “nervous,” and goes on to become a college professor. There are times when his stuttering caused him to be scared, such as when his daughter thought this is the way...

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Stuttering affects about 1% of the American population. It is a communication disorder which repeats, prolongs, and/or has abnormal stoppage of sounds. This can be difficult for people to communicate with each other and delay communication learning (NIDCD, 2012). Stuttering is thought to be caused by as many as four reasons including genetics, the development of the child, nerve functions in the brain, and the lifestyle of the family (Stuttering Foundation, 2013). This study will investigate whether stuttering affects the way non-stutterers retrieve information.
Background
Stuttering, or stammering, varies in cultures but children from higher social and economic class tend to have more stuttering dysfunctions (Leung & Robson, 1990). People not only stutter with the verbal communication but physically too; meaning the body can’t be controlled at times. This includes excessive blinking of the eyes, squeezing eyes shut during a stutter episode, loss of eye contact and/or side-to-side movement of the eyes (Zebrowski, 2003). In ancient Greece it was said that someone who stutters had a dry tongue which could be fixed by chemicals or surgery in the mouth. In the 19th Century it was believed that the mouth had a defect that needed disfiguring, nonreversible surgery to fix it....

...speech at early age which appears and disappears in some situations and can be missed in others (Tarkowski, 2010). Nor should a parent’s input be overlooked as it may provide a clinician with essential information on their children’s speech (Einarsdo & Ingham,2008).
There are variety of symptoms that associated with stuttering, both overt and covert, also recognizable speech components that are consistent with stuttering, namely repetitions of parts of words, single-syllables or sounds and prolongations and blocks (Yairi & Sheery, 2011; Conture, 1990; Andrews & Ingham, 1971).
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...unique form of communication system used all around the world, in many different cultures and variations. In the short stories, On Stuttering, by Edward Hoagland, and Me Talk Pretty by David Sedaris, the authors discuss how they had to overcome obstacles in their everyday lives because of their speech impediments. They describe how they felt about their limitations, different strategies they used to defeat their language barriers, and the affects that theses obstacles had on their self confidence. Hoagland struggles with a stuttering problem, while Sedaris has moved to France in hopes to become fluent in a new language; although their handicaps were different, they used many of the same approaches to master them.
Edward Hoagland is thought of as one the america's finest essayists, which is ironic considering he cannot speak as fluent as the average person. In his memoir Compass Points, Hoagland writes: “Most of us live like stand up comedians on a vaudeville stage—the way an essayist does—by our humble wits, messing up, swallowing an aspirin, knowing Hollywood wont call, thinking no one we love will die today, just another day of sunshine and rain” (mcQuade atwan 113). He has a humorous outlook and attitude on the way people live; the same attitude is also seen in his essay Stuttering in response to his speech impediment. After 60 years of stuttering, he refers to his life as becoming a “matter of measuring the...

...According to Singular's Pocket Dictionary of Speech-Language Pathology “stuttering is an articulatory or phonatory problem that typically presents in childhood and is characterized by anxiety about the efficacy of spoken communication, along with forced, involuntary hesitation, duplication, and protraction of sounds and syllables.” Stuttering can be witnessed in the rate, pitch, inflection, and even facial expressions of a speaker. The cause of this problem is not set in stone, which leads to countless theories as to why people stutter. Along with numerous theories as to why people have this disorder, there are also limitless treatment methods that can be used to help a speaker with a stuttering problem. Stuttering has been a controversial topic among professionals for hundreds of years, and we are still learning what works and what does not work for this curious disorder.
The etiology of stuttering is not certain to this day. Many professionals are torn between the psychological and neurological theories as to why people stutter. There are many theories which explain stuttering as a psychosomatic problem that can be dealt with by using psychotherapy. The “Repressed Need” hypothesis explains that stuttering is a neurotic symptom which is fixed in the unconscious. The repressed need is said to come from a longing for either oral or anal gratification. The stutterer is able to...

...StutteringStuttering is a speech pattern that contains an abnormally high frequency or duration of disruptions in the forward flow of speech affecting its continuity, rhythm, rate, and effortfulness. A disruption in speech is called a disfluency. We all have disfluencies in our speech, such as “uh”, “um”, pausing, or rewording, but it is only considered stuttering when we are disfluent more than ten percent of the time.
The Essentials of Stuttering
Fluency is the effortless flow of speech. There are four parts to fluency: continuity, rate, rhythm, and effort. Stuttering affects all four parts. Continuity is the smoothness of speech. It is decreased by how often and where pauses happen in speech and by how many extra sounds are added. Rate is how fast or slow speech is, and is measured by words or syllables spoken per minute. The rate of information and sound flow is too slow for people who stutter. That is why it can be harder to listen to them. Rhythm is the pattern of speech and it depends on intonation, stress pattern, timing, and duration. People who stutter have disruptions that are louder, longer, and slightly higher pitched. This is what makes disfluencies more noticeable. Lastly, effort is how much mental or physical work it takes to talk. Normal speech is not effortful. It takes people who stutter more effort to talk. It takes mental effort to think ahead of time about what words won’t make...

...Stuttering also known as stammering is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the person who stutters is unable to produce sounds.
The term stuttering is most commonly associated with involuntary sound repetition, but it also encompasses the abnormal hesitation or pausing before speech, referred to by people who stutter as blocks, and the prolongation of certain sounds, usually vowels and semivowels. For many people who stutter, repetition is the primary problem. Blocks and prolongations are learned mechanisms to mask repetition, as the fear of repetitive speaking in public is often the main cause of psychological unease. The term "stuttering" covers a wide range of severity, encompassing barely perceptible impediments that are largely cosmetic to severe symptoms that effectively prevent oral communication.
The impact of stuttering on a person's functioning and emotional state can be severe. This may include fears of having to enunciate specific vowels or consonants, fears of being caught stuttering in social situations, self-imposed isolation, anxiety, stress, shame, being a possible target of bullying (especially in children), having to use word substitution and rearrange words in a sentence to hide stuttering, or a feeling of...